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IBM Employees Protest Cooperation With Donald Trump (theintercept.com)
Reader Presto Vivace shares a report on The Intercept: IBM employees are taking a public stand following a personal pitch to Donald Trump from CEO Ginni Rometty and the company's initial refusal to rule out participating in the creation of a national Muslim registry. In November, Rometty wrote Trump directly, congratulating him on his electoral victory and detailing various services the company could sell his administration. The letter was published on an internal IBM blog along with a personal note from Rometty to her enormous global staff. "As IBMers, we believe that innovation improves the human condition. ... We support, tolerance, diversity, the development of expertise, and the open exchange of ideas," she wrote in the context of lending material support to a man who won the election by rejecting all of those values. Employee comments were a mix of support and horror. Now, some of those who were horrified are going public, denouncing Rometty's letter and asserting "our right to refuse participation in any U.S. government contracts that violate constitutionally protected civil liberties." The IBMPetition.org effort has been spearheaded in part by IBM cybersecurity engineer Daniel Hanley, who told The Intercept he started organizing with his coworkers after reading Rometty's letter. "I was shocked, of course," Hanley said, "because IBM has purported to espouse diversity and inclusion, and yet here's Ginni Rometty in an unqualified way reaching out to an admin whose electoral success was based on racist programs."
IBM partnered with a nice man back in the 30s from Germany and that turned out just great!
If only they had shown that kind of backbone during the Obama years and made such a statement about any involvement of IBM in NSA surveillance, creation of massive financial and medical databases on US citizens, and drone killings.
We support, tolerance, diversity, the development of expertise, and the open exchange of ideas," she wrote in the context of lending material support to a man who won the election by rejecting all of those values.
Here's a thought - perhaps Trump indeed DOES support all those values, and you are all biting at yet more Fake News that attempts to claim he does not... time and again you find that items that paint Trump as a nazi or what have you are all vastly blown out of proportion and based on people or things Trump does not actually support and has disclaimed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The muslim registry is a leftist fake news, he never said anything about that, anyway the nsa have enough resources to do that, in fact they should have this kind of registry for years.
At least oppose trump with facts, this one is just gossip-
Where the fuck are all these special-snowflake IBM employees when they have no problem helping their corporate masters commit actual violations of civil liberties in China?
http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2...
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Sorry, but we refuse to give into neo-Nazism. We are learning from Germany's big mistake to not just go with the evil flow.
Go ahead and invoke Godwin's Law. If it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, smells like a duck, and has funny hair like a duck, it's probably a friggen duck.
Table-ized A.I.
I guess we're supposed to pretend that IBM's technology wasn't used 75-80 years ago to carry out the holocaust?
It's good that the company has learned something since then.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Sorry, but I find T's statements and attitudes surprisingly similar to Adolf's. Even if T's are somewhat milder, that's hardly a reason to dismiss them.
"But that iceberg is only 2/3 the one that sank Titanic. Relax!"
Table-ized A.I.
f he did, it was — likely as not — out of concern for those freedoms and the rights we cherish. Because Islam is incompatible with many of them.
Yes, we must protect the values we cherish by destroying them.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength
You are inventing a false dichotomy.
Table-ized A.I.
Sounds like an argument against Affirmative Action...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And, it took all of about 37 seconds before someone compared a businessman and reality TV star to a vicious, military-style dictator who started a world war that caused the death of more than one hundred million people and methodically murdered millions of people in concentration camps.
Yeah, I'm invoking Godwin's Law because it's applicable here and really a really tired comparison.
If you are illegal, we want you out. While illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe, I'm looking at you too.
A lot is said about America being a land of immigrants. It is true. Sadly you are not going to be one of them.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Trump's original proposal last year of banning all (non-American) Muslims from coming to the US (which has since morphed into 'Extreme Vetting') was perfectly legal: there are no laws that grant US rights to people not living in the US. But if he did a Muslim registry, which sounds like all Muslims in America - citizens or not - would be compiled into a list, that would probably end up in the Supreme Court.
I agree w/ you that Islam does not belong in the US, but that needs to be done legislatively by de-classifying it as a religion in terms of First Amendment protections. Like there are things in Islam - from death sentences for apostasy, stoning of adulterers, throwing gays from tall buildings, FGMs, et al that are incompatible w/ the US constitution. That's never been tried in court, but needs to be spelt out. Otherwise, someone doing an honor killing can claim first amendment protection of practice of Islam as the basis of strangling his daughter b'cos she was out kissing a Jewish guy.
Because Islam is incompatible with many of them.
Yup yup, and hardline Christianity isn't. Any religion, when taken to extremes, is antithetical to a country that proclaims religious freedom as one of its cornerstones. Trying to single-out Islam as the problem is nowhere near the solution, it makes you one of them us-vs-them guys that fuels this fire even more.
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Okay, let's compare a (failed) artist to a TV star. Better?
If the German citizens had nipped it in the bud, it may not have gone as far as it did. Otherwise, it's the equivalent of feeding a troll.
Table-ized A.I.
It is the silly hyperbole of calling Trump or his supporters neo-nazis or fascists that guarantees the Democrats will continue to lose elections. Start speaking rationally again.
And yet, ritual infant male genital mutilation, even though it removes more tissue is a-ok. (You should review the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that we begin performing infant female genital mutilation in US hospitals to get a better idea what exactly it is.)
Oddly, the rest of that list is in both Christianity and Islam by way of the Old Testament, even including ritual infant male genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation is not a mandatory part of Islam.
If you're not certain, I'd invite this fellow called MikeeUSA to help out your understanding of the Old Testament. He does seem to know what he's talking about when you peel back the insanity.
The "idea" came in because when repeatedly and directly asked to refute the idea - he hem and hawed and waffled and refused to do so. He may not have directly and openly advocated for such a thing, be he did his very level best to give the impression that he didn't find such violations of civil rights at all unattractive. And this isn't something that happened once, at a rally say, it's something that happened multiple times over a span of days.
Someone repeating the propaganda quote rather than addressing the facts and issues raised in the rest of the article (which it doesn't appear you actually read, or understood) should ask that question of the man in the mirror.
and India. IBM dumped almost all of it's non-Sales staff except a few researches to work on high profile projects that keep them in the news. IBM has long since switched to being an Indian outsourcer who occasionally does some research as part of a broader marketing push. They said as much around 2008 when they did their last round of layoffs.
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And, it took all of about 37 seconds before someone compared a businessman and reality TV star to a vicious, military-style dictator who started a world war that caused the death of more than one hundred million people and methodically murdered millions of people in concentration camps.
Old Adolf didn't start as a Dictator. He started as a ex-corporal and failed artist who found that he got a lot of attention screaming about how Jews were filthy and communists were evil in front of beer hall crowds. He wasn't particularly smart, but he was very charismatic. The similarities between Trump and Adolf's character and politics is striking and rather alarming to people who study world history. The people who just want to demonize Trump will of course throw around the comparison as it suits them.
No, Donald hasn't committed genocide. Comparing him to Hitler in that sense is completely ridiculous. I think the concern that people have about him is that he comes off as a populist bully, someone who is completely willing to throw followers of Islam and Mexicans under the bus in order to gain populist support. In that sense of the comparison, he is very much like Hitler.
Godwin's 'Law', notes that it is OK to discuss Nazis in the context of a topic that pertains to Nazis. So provided that we are not just trying to demonize him, it seems fair. There is a real concern that Trump is going to do some very evil things with power, and starting a national Islam database seems very similar to Germany's first steps with Jewish people. IBM was the company who sold Germany the machines to make punch cards and trace genealogy of Jewish people, so this should be a very touchy topic for IBM.
I don't care if you are pro or anti Trump. Don't get your opinions about him from pundits or talk show hosts. Just watch for yourself what he does very closely and think about history. It is usually a rerun...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Easy, create policies that do away with these "tribal" tendencies. But you see we tried that and the "crybullies" got upset because that meant certain minorities were poorly represented in certain areas of what they would consider privileged areas of society, like higher education.
If you want to see an example of a meritocracy then look to athletics or the military. Blacks make up about 12% of the US population by most estimates. You don't see a lot of Blacks in the Coast Guard though. How could that be? To see why then look to the Olympics on how well Blacks compete in swimming events. Blacks, for the most part, are poor swimmers. Should we award a bronze medal to a Black person just because they are Black? No, of course not. Should we make the Coast Guard take in more Black recruits? Sure, if you want to put people's lives at risk.
Affirmative action policies are just as abhorrent as any other discrimination. By short circuiting the meritocracy that should dominate in education and business we are making the world worse off, not better. If someone is actually promoting people out of "tribal" reasons over merit then this will be reflected in the quality of their work. A professional sports team that hired athletes out of "tribal tendencies" will find themselves a laughing stock in short order, not because of being "too White" or "too Black" but because they will be beaten badly by the teams that hire on merit.
Think about where your affirmative actions policies would lead. We'd have people getting into fields like medicine and engineering out of racial preference over merit. This means people will die because of poorly performed surgeries and improperly built bridges. One thing about affirmative action is it cannot override merit completely. A sub par physician or engineer simply will not get as far as an excellent one. What affirmative action did do though is lower the quality of the population of very critical professions. People that should have gotten into medical school or an engineering program out of merit were denied that spot because a person of some protected minority got in instead.
I say this as a protected minority. I am a disabled veteran and it gives me certain preferences in finding work, getting into schools, etc. If you think that I don't take advantage of this preferential treatment then you are a fool. I know what's best for me and so I act on it. I don't expect anyone else to do different. What I do expect though is that people should not get into places that they do not belong. If the bar has to be lowered to meet a set demographic profile then that is a problem.
I remember a conversation I had with a classmate once where we got to talking about affirmative action. He said something that stuck with me, it went something like if you want to get into engineering then claim you are a Black lesbian Jew. Someone like that would tick off all the affirmative action boxes, that person probably wouldn't even have to go to class to graduate and get hired immediately.
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